In the treatment of aqueous systems with sanitizing and/or bacteriostatic, or surface active agents, it is very often desirable, especially in the consumer products markets, to also impart aesthetically pleasing components, such as fragrances and colorants into the system. An illustration of such a system is the treatment of flushing toilets with automatically dispensed sanitizing, cleansing, and bacteriostatic agents to effectively clean and sanitize the toilet bowl with every flush. From an aesthetic standpoint, it has been found desirable to dispense fragrances and colorants at the same time, to impart pleasing fragrance to the environment. The colorants not only impart a pleasing appearance to the water in the toilet bowl, but they may also serve to assure the consumer that, in fact, the desired treating agents (which are normally colorless) are being dispensed. The colorants may also serve as an indicator that the dispensing package has been exhausted, i.e., their absence indicates the necessity for renewing the treatment agents.
Most fragrances are hydrophobic in nature and are ordinarily formulated and/or preserved in organic hydrocarbon bases. These "oily, waxy" bases are also hydrophobic and only contribute to the aqueous insolubility of the fragrance oils.
On the other hand, the systems of interest are aqueous in nature, and it therefore becomes a problem to assure uniform and steady dispersion of the fragrance and, very often, the colorant components on a continuing basis throughout the aqueous medium.
Heretofore, the dispensing of the water immiscible components into the aqueous medium has been solved by providing separate reservoirs for the immiscible components. These reservoirs have been provided with some type of valving arrangement to meter predetermined quantities of the immiscible components into the aqueous medium during periods of aqueous flow or agitation. Upon release, the immiscible components are physically carried along with the water flow, float to the surface at quiescent portions of the system, where they are released or evaporated into surrounding environment.
Such separate reservoir, valving arrangements suffer from a number of potential defects. First, since the immiscible component is released on a "shot by shot" basis, sufficient material must be released on each "shot" to ensure that enough material is delivered to the system to provide the desired component at remote locations from the reservoir valve location. This requirement demands release of a certain quantity of component at each operation of the valve. The mechanics of this operation, frequently requires the release of excess quantitites of the components and the provision of relatively large reservoirs. This process also tends. to be inefficient and often requires the release of larger "shots" of component than necessary to accomplish the job.
Secondly, the intermittent operation of the valves requires some type of sensing mechanism to ensure valve operation at the proper time. Such sensing mechanisms and the valves themselves are subject to failure or faulty operation.
Thirdly, since sophisticated sensing and valve mechanisms are costly, there is a tendency to use the less precise and less complicated mechanisms, whereby, close control of the amount of immiscible component is unable to be maintained. The result is poor control over the uniform release of the immiscible components; and attendant greater use of components than is necessary for optimum results.
Thus it is apparent that there is a need for a simple reliable mechanism that will deliver closely controlled amounts of immiscible materials into an aqueous system.